Israel's Predicament at 60: World's worst neighbourhood
by Daniel Pipes
National Post (Toronto)
May 6, 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5552
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Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the
British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course,
was one; the other was Pakistan.
They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan's
experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil,
and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue
state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable,
liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-edge high-tech
sector, lively culture, and impressive social cohesion.
But for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse
that Pakistan and most other polities never face: the threat of
elimination. Its remarkable progress over the decades has not
liberated it from a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every
means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military
attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic
assault, and ideological undermining. No other contem****ary state
faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history ever
has.
The enemies of Israel divide into two main camps: the Left and the
Muslims, with the far Right a minor third element. The Left includes a
rabid edge (International ANSWER, Noam Chomsky) and a more polite
centre (United Nations General Assembly, Canada's Liberal Party, the
mainstream media, mainline churches, school textbooks). In the final
analysis, however, the Left serves less as a force in its own right
than as an auxiliary for the primary anti-Zionist actor, which is the
Muslim population. This latter, in turn, can be divided into three
distinct groupings.
First come the foreign states: Five armed forces that invaded Israel
on its independence in May 1948, and then neighboring armies, air
forces, and navies fought in the wars of 1956, 1967, 1970, and 1973.
While the conventional threat has somewhat receded, Egypt's
U.S.-financed arms build-up presents one danger and the threats from
weapons of mass destruction (especially from Iran but also from Syria
and potentially from many other states) present an even greater one.
Second come the external Palestinians, those living outside Israel.
Sidelined by governments from 1948 until 1967, Yasir Arafat and the
Palestine Liberation Organization got their op****tunity with the
defeat of three states' armed forces in the Six-Day War. Subsequent
developments, such as the 1982 Lebanon war and the 1993 Oslo accords,
confirmed the centrality of external Palestinians. Today, they drive
the conflict, through violence (terrorism, missiles from Gaza) and
even more im****tantly by driving world opinion against Israel via a
public relations effort that resonates widely among Muslims and the
Left.
Third come the Muslim citizens of Israel, the sleepers in the
equation. In 1949, they numbered merely 111,000, or 9 percent of
Israel's population but by 2005, they had multiplied ten-fold, to
1,141,000, and to 16 percent of the population. They benefited from
Israel's open ways to evolve from a docile and ineffective community
into a assertive one that increasingly rejects the Jewish nature of
the Israeli state, with potentially profound consequences for that the
future identity of that state.
If this long list of perils makes Israel different from all other
Western countries, forcing it to protect itself on a daily basis from
the ranks of its many foes, its predicament renders Israel oddly
similar to other Middle Eastern countries, which likewise face a
threat of elimination.
Kuwait, conquered by Iraq, actually disappeared from the face of the
earth between August 1990 and February 1991; were it not for an
American-led coalition, it would quite certainly never been
resurrected. Lebanon has been effectively under Syrian control since
1976 and, should developments warrant formal annexation, Damascus
could at will officially incor****ate it. Bahrain is occasionally
claimed by Tehran to be a part of Iran, most recently in July 2007,
when an associate of Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, Iran's supreme leader,
claimed that "Bahrain is part of Iran's soil," and insisted that "The
principal demand of the Bahraini people today is to return this
province … to its mother, Islamic Iran." Jordan's existence as an
independent state has always been precarious, in part because it is
still seen as a colonial artifice of Winston Churchill, in part
because several states (Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) and the
Palestinians see it as fair prey.
That Israel finds itself in this company has several implications. It
puts Israel's existential dilemma into perspective: If no country
risks elimination outside of the Middle East, this is a nearly routine
problem within the region, suggesting that Israel's unsettled status
will not be resolved any time soon. This pattern also highlights the
Middle East's uniquely cruel, unstable, and fatal political life; the
region ranks, clearly, as the world's worst neighborhood. Israel is
the child with glasses trying to succeed at school while living in a
gang-infested part of town.
The Middle East's deep and wide political sickness points to the error
of seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict as the motor force behind its
problems. More sensible is to see Israel's plight as the result of the
region's toxic politics. Blaming the Middle East's autocracy,
radicalism, and violence on Israel is like blaming the diligent school
child for the gangs. Conversely, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict
means only solving that conflict, not fixing the region.
If all the members of this imperiled quintet worry about extinction,
Israel's troubles are the most complex. Israel having survived
countless threats to its existence over the past six decades, and it
having done so with its honor intact, offers a reason for its
population to celebrate. But the rejoicing cannot last long, for it's
right back to the barricades to defend against the next threat.
FREE GILAD SHALIT, EHUD GOLDWASSER AND ELDAD REGEV!
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